Review A fine character-driven novel that puts in more effort than your usual serial killer yarn * Sunday Sport * Always thrilling and often terrifying, Shadow Man is a descendent of Chandler's The Big Sleep. Underlying the grisly dangers of Drew's novel is the forceful honesty of all good California noir, the necessary and clear-eyed exploration of the innate human truths that should and do scare us. * Claire Vaye Watkins * In Alan Drew's electric new novel, Southern California in the 1980s is so palpable it is almost a character of its own, lucid and relevant. His main character, Detective Ben Wade, is an outsize but knowable force, up there with Marlowe and Jake Gittes. Shadow Man is an enrapturing read from its start to its unpredictable, enthralling finish. -- Daniel Torday * Author of The Last Flight of Poxl West * Excellent, atmospheric . . . [a] superb police procedural . . . [Ben Wade] is but one of many sharply etched characters who help make Shadow Man a stellar achievement, a book that unspools like a dark-toned movie in the reader's mind. * The Wall Street Journal * Part murder mystery, part family drama, Alan Drew's Shadow Man has everything I like in a novel: grit, heart, and nail-biting suspense. It's the sort of magically absorbing novel that keeps you turning the pages and checking the locks on the door. -- Lauren Grodstein * author of A Friend of the Family * Shadow Man is smart, chilling, and impossible to put down, an accomplished thriller by a writer to watch. Alan Drew is a rising star, blending suspense and humanity with consummate style. -- William Landay * Author of Defending Jacob * [Hero Detective Ben Wade investigates with] a clarity and wisdom reminiscent of Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch - and there is no higher praise. * Daily Mail * Shadow Man revises the old detective story and turns it in several fascinating directions. Alan Drew writes with precision, subtlety, and a streak of suspense that does not often color the literary novel. * Colum McCann * Wonderfully imagined and wonderfully written, patient but propulsive, serious but suspenseful, grown-up but gripping, Shadow Man is everything a great thriller should be. * Lee Child * About the Author Alan Drew is the author of Shadow Man, a literary thriller. His critically acclaimed debut novel, Gardens of Water, has been translated into ten languages and published in nearly two-dozen countries. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he was awarded a Teaching/Writing Fellowship. An Associate Professor of English at Villanova University where he directs the creative writing program, he lives near Philadelphia with his wife and two children. Learn more about his books at www.alan-drew.com.
S**.
Gripping story meets rich prose
A great story is one thing - which this is - but it is also so beautifully crafted, I found the words as delicious as eating blueberries. There is a cadence to this book that is rich and evocative, without the tendency to ever get soggy.The story is a great study in what fear means and is a masterful contrast between a public and private man hunt. Drew explores our cultural predisposition to sweep crimes under the rug that are just as insidious as gruesome, sensationalist murder.
B**)
SoCal Noir - 4+
This well written crime novel leaps beyond the standard police procedural and/or action piece. The novel opens with two deaths--one the work of a serial killer, the second a far more complex event whose cause will not be clear until the end of the story. The book's protagonist, a suburban cop/detective gradually becomes something that morphs into a substantive part of the second killing.I thought the writing here was superb, but as a native of Southern California, I really enjoyed the setting(s) which moves from place to place along the Orange County Coast.Highly entertaining, if a little heavy duty at times.
R**T
This is a book content warning
Hypothetically, if you knew that the price of reading this well-written police-procedural, with characters who seem pretty real, characters you can care about, well-narrated, with plot rather predictable, but not much obscenity, some non-graphic depiction of adult sexuality; the price you pay is constant exposure to themes of child abuse, child sexual abuse, sexual abuse of minors, depiction of sex acts with minors, and serial murder and sociopathy, would you want to devote several hours of your life to the project? If "Yes," then this is your next book. There's not much cleverness or detective work, or ingenuity displayed. The appeal of this book is more visceral than cerebral. Weighting the good features generously against the bad, I come up with three stars. Your own weighting may vary.
K**R
Thoughtfully weird and freakishly poignant
Wonderful , rich character development. Ben's quirks and past history develop to the reader as an onion with layers peeling back slowly. Love the scenery in my mind as Alan lays out the terrain for us. The antagonist is tortured and rightly so. Drew continually turns up the weird factor and drawsus into the facets of this freaky dude.
J**S
Five Stars
Good book...it kept my ADHD brain occupied all the way to the end...
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